FNU News
FNU Celebrates 50 “The largest impact of the FNP program has been to ameliorate the primary care shortage in communities, particularly in rural and underserved areas.” -- Dr. Joan Slager, FNU Dean of Nursing Dr. Joan Slager Dating to its inception, Frontier Nursing University has a long history of innovation borne out of necessity. Whether it was riding on horseback to provide care to families in Kentucky’s rural mountains or pioneering the first midwifery community-based distance education program in the United States, FNU has adapted to the needs of the communities its students serve. In this the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife as designated by the World Health Organization, FNU celebrates the 50th anniversary of one of its most significant contributions -- the nation’s first Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) program. “In the 1950s and early 1960s, due to a shortage in primary care physicians particularly in rural communities, nurses were recruited to assist physicians to meet the primary care needs in their communities,” said FNU Dean of Nursing Dr. Joan Slager, CNM, DNP, FACNM, FAAN. “Launching the FNP program was in alignment with FNU’s mission of educating providers to meet the needs of rural and underserved communities.”
The process to launch the FNP program began in the late 1960s when FNU, then known as the Frontier Graduate School of Midwifery, recognized the primary care shortage and began providing a broaderbased education for nurses. The concept of educating its students to extend their abilities beyond traditional nursing and nurse-midwifery roles had long been a fixture of the FNU curriculum. The establishment of the FNP program, in essence, formalized the creation of a new nursing profession. “The original nurses recruited in the 1920s for the Frontier Nursing Service were midwives and public health nurses, so providing care beyond maternity services was not at all unusual,” Dr. Slager said. “As the role of the nurse practitioner in the country was developed and formalized, FNU responded to meeting this need for primary care providers by launching the FNP program. The largest impact of the FNP program has been to ameliorate the primary care shortage in communities, particularly in rural and underserved areas.”
12 Frontier Nursing University • Quarterly Bulletin
Much like the Frontier Nursing Service nurse-midwives headed into the wilderness to care for families of rural Appalachia who had little or no access to medical care otherwise, today FNU graduates are providing much-needed care in remote regions all across the country where physicians are in increasingly short supply. One such locale is the Alaskan frontier, where the rugged mountainous terrain includes more than 3 million lakes and 3,000 rivers. Approximately 96 percent of the state’s landmass lies in Health Professional Shortage Areas, as identified by the Health Resources and Services Administration. Many of the remote residents travel into town only once or twice a year for supplies and, if needed, basic medical care. Even in populated areas, such as Juneau, which has a population of more than 32,000, access to care is limited. David Moore, FNP, Class 75, works at the city’s Front Street Clinic, whose patients include a large segment of the city’s homeless population. As the only practitioner at the clinic, Moore is clearly filling what would otherwise be a vast void.
